Calsun

There is the mistaken belief that one can recover from a Covid viral infection despite all evidence to the contrary. There is permanent damage to the body. It if more like children getting scarlet fever which can resulted in damaged to the heart. A friend's father who was very fit and did not drink or smoke, at age 32 had a heart attack and died in the lobby of a bank where he was planning to get traveler's checks for the family vacation.

My wife and I have avoided air travel completely. I cannot see sufficient reason to risk permanent damage to my body, and my lungs and brain in particular. If I became infected I would most likely avoid spending time in a hospital and acquiring some new additional infection, but the damage to my body would be something I would have to live with for the rest of my life.

I want to do everything possible to live as long a healthy life as possible and avoid high risk behavior that will jeopardize that objective. Fortunately my wife shares my desire.

Biker395 

Please provide evidence for the claim that one cannot recover from a COVID infection.

Atlas Shrugged

That’s a sad story. Do what you need to do and feel safe regarding COVID. But who gets Travelers Cheques nowadays especially a 32 year old? Also is your friend 14 years old?

rsbob 

Please provide links to your source/s.

I use CDC and John’s Hopkins for my information which doesn’t match yours.

rsbob 

Quick update, am on week 4 post infection. All symptoms abated except energy level which I understand is common. If I work in the garden (pruning and weeding) for more than 2 hours am exhausted and need a rest. Since I am driven to be active, this rather sucks, but can feel myself gradually getting better. Having to force myself to take it easier than I would like. Took a friend 5 weeks to get back to pre-COVID and now he is out getting PRs again.

Wife went out yesterday for a. 20 mile ride and returned after 11 exhausted. Both have a way to go.

cyclezen

sorry to hear about you and your wife's COVID infection. Hope you have no lingering issues after the main infection recedes.
Can I ask how your wife was able to get Paxlovid before your trip? I assume she wasn't 'positive' before the trip?
I'm heading to Europe in Begin of Oct, for the month. Gonna take as many precautions as possible, especially during the travel phase. An wondering about 'treatment', like Paxlovid, should I have my usual turn of luck...
Thanks for any info
Yuri

rsbob 

My wife was not positive before the trip. She has severe RA which is being managed by a couple of drugs but puts her more at risk than the general already vaccinated public. Her Rheumatologist bent the rules a bit because we would be abroad and ordered it ‘just in case’ which turned out to be the case. I fortunately don’t have any pre-existing conditions but approached my PCP nonetheless. He turned me down flat. Wear N95s at the airport, on your flights and whenever in close proximity to others. Outdoors should be fine and restaurants with good spacing between tables should be alright. Our mistake was letting our guard down because infection rates are exceptionally low in Norway, 2 per 100,000/day and no one wore masks. We got it on a puddle jump flight when in Norway with a coughing kid behind us. We caught it before we could put on our masks. We did take cold medication with us just in case which came in handy, but did have to go to the local pharmacies when they ran out.

Have a good trip. Masking inconvenience is well worth the effort. We still regret not being more diligent.
Have a safe trip.

cyclezen

Thanks, I also have a low immune sys situation, so maybe I can get some to take along. I'm still masking in all situations where there are groups of people in proximity.
Personally, wearing a mask is not anything incovenient. I mean, it certainly isn;t stopping me from breathing, LOL! Considering the really physical stressful stuff I've survived throughout my years, whining about masking is a WTF?... LOL! I plan on masking for the foreseeable future... Biggest problem I have is getting out of the car (or leaving the house) without the masks in hand... same problem I have with taking my glasses with me... senior stuff... LOL!
good tip though... I'll bug my oncologist to give me a prescript...
Thanks
Yuri

MoAlpha

There are some large studies on morbidity and mortality in the months or years after COVID, which suggest lasting risk, particularly for vascular events (stroke and MI), and one a study of a large repository of brain MRI scans from the UK, showing brain tissue loss after infection. All scary enough, but none of these should be taken to imply that complete recovery is impossible or even uncommon. Also, where stratification for severity and COVID risk factors was done, these have been shown to predict post-COVID morbidity. The brain tissue loss is concerning, but many stressors (intercontinental travel, corticosteroid treatment, etc.) shrink the brain and brains seem generally to plump back up after the stress is removed.

rsbob 

It might be helpful if you delineate which variant of COVID you are referring to. Yes the original COVID-19 was the worst in terms of the impact to most body systems, but the subsequent variants, specifically 4 and 5 are not nearly as vicious.

Did a search on impact on the brain and flying and came up empty. I have read about increased cosmic radiation levels for flight personnel but that is it. https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/topics/air...radiation.html

MoAlpha

I was referring to an increased risk of non-COVID events after recovery from acute disease. These are large, population-based, studies, some retrospective, which did not obtain viral sequences. I suppose one could look them up and infer the strain mix from time and place, but I don’t have time.

Temporal lobe volume loss from jet lag

missinglink

I couldn't agree more. I hadn't been on a plane since 1969. Decided to treat myself and the wife to a week in Alaska after living like hermits for years. Arrived on a Sunday and tested positive for covid four days later. We're fully boosted and always mask up.

It felt like a case of Flu, and got pretty bad, pretty fast. We ended up at a clinic in Fairbanks where they gave both the wife and I the monoclonal antibody treatments.

The biggest shock to us was the airports. We carried our Vax cards and expected to be screened or tested for fever. There was none of that. They didn't even require masks on the plane or in the terminals. So when I started feeling ill, it was no surprise when I tested positive with the home test kits we carried along.

I felt relief within 12 hours after treatment, and am about 90% good now, five days after treatment. The wife never felt bad and never tested positive, but was also given the treatment at their urging.

rsbob 

Tested completely negative today and to celebrate went out for an easy short ride with a bit of climbing. My heart rate was above normal which was concerning but did not feel bad. Will continue to slowly get back and man does it feel great.

pdlamb

The hardest part for me has been resetting my expectations. The first week was comparatively easy: "Wow, it feels good to be back on the bike! I'll just train and regain my speed and endurance." My second week's self-talk was more like, "Dang it, I've been recuperating and training for a week. Why can't I go a far and as fast as I could before I got sick?" It's hard to accept that, compared to 10 miles a day, I'm doing much better now at 25 miles but 40 miles is on the upper edge of my range.

prj71

This is simply not true.

I had Covid last October. Lasted a Friday through the following Wednesday. Some fever, minor cough and a couple of naps here and there during the day. By Thursday I was pretty much back to normal and my fitness level is the same as it ever was. I'm not vaxxed either.


https://katv.com/news/nation-world/n...navirus-hybrid

https://www.reuters.com/business/hea...us-2022-01-19/

Biker395 

I’ve been traveling a lot as of late … I’m abroad as I write this.

I can say this. Perhaps 1/500 - 1/2000 people I see are wearing masks, and no one is checking temperatures or vax cards. That includes airports, airplanes, trains (some packed to the gills) and tourist attractions (also packed).

rsbob 

Appreciate sharing your experience. Will set my expectations appropriately

rsbob 

three weeks abroad, Norway and Ireland and can count on one hand the number of people wearing masks. Was astounding.

prj71

Why is that astounding? I haven't seen anyone wearing masks in over a year.

andrewclaus

I'm nervously waiting for that year when things just start to decline. I feared my COVID infection would be the start of that, but it looks like I might have gotten over that hump.

I had a mild case back in April, just before I turned 65. Within a week after a negative self-test I was back on the bike, even climbing a little, but the climbing wasn't fun. It took a couple of months to recover to the point where climbing was fun again. I thought it was interesting that I felt normal in everything else I do, including hiking in hills and working on trail and theater set crews. I guess climbing on the bike is the most strenuous activity I do now.

With the reduction of COVID-related closures, life got closer to normal and I didn't cycle as much this summer. I just realized the summer is winding down and if I want to cycle in the high country here in Colorado I'd better get going at it. I made my first attempt of the season at climbing above treeline last week, and it went very well. I'm hoping to get in a few more trips and see if I can get back into the excellent condition I achieved last year.

rsbob 

On the plane over, about 1/3 of the passengers were masked.

rsbob 

Final update. Went out today and did 50 miles but didn’t feel too energetic and certainly didn’t climb like the pre-days but then I also have had 5 weeks off too. Am definitely well on the road to getting back to my old self. Looking at the last time I rode the route, I was 0.4 MPH slower this time with an average of 15.5 with 2,400’ climbimg. In a few weeks will get the new COVID shot and hopefully will have better immunity for a handful of months.

t2p

related notes

unless the mask is high quality (N95 or similar variation) and is fit correctly (no gaps) - the mask is barely providing any protection

Denmark is one country that is now banning booster shots for anyone under 50 yrs old unless they have a medical condition

missinglink

I'm currently starting day 12 of recovery. I'd earlier thought I'd be well over this by now. My wife insisted I go see our family doc because of my symptoms persisting.
He prescribed antibiotics and a decongestant on Thursday the 15th. (I first tested positive on the 8th).

I think I'm making progress, but it's been slower than expected. The amount of gunk I've coughed up from my lungs gives me a better understanding of why so many people end up on a ventilator.

Sorcerer

Today is 09/20/2022 and according to the local protocol it's DAY5 of my infection.

In theory, from the sounds of it, I can go back to work as soon as I get a negative PCR test . So I've already given my sample this morning. Results tomorrow.

All days since infection have had symptoms, mostly mild, including today.

I'm 63.

I did lose my sense of smell for the limited period of Sunday afternoon. On Sunday after disinfecting the bathroom I was consigned to in our house, making a project out of making it nice after a summer of neglect, I decided a bath sounded good. That's the first bath in many years. It was good, but the pine scented soap offered no scent. Then I checked the next day and I could smell it fine.

Instead of riding and work I've been doing some digital keyboard music composition, and yesterday I made some recordings. I'm a total hack. Well later I took a nap, and at some point I woke up and said toy myself hey I left the computer on and turned the thing off and lost all of the "work" I did. This is brain fog. I wouldn't normally do that. No big deal though, because despite the brain fog and the symptoms I can still play and do it over today.

That's just weird though. I disregarded the computer prompts to savey work. My bad. It's sort of makes me wonder if I could forget to torque bolts to spec while working now.

I'll have to be extra-methodical.

​​​​​​Next thing is working on a flat lander bike today and taking it for a solo spin on an empty short circuit . I haven't been on a bike since last Wednesday.